Politics

Neither you nor I nor Barack Obama know enough about the world to say whether his decision to send 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan at a cost of billions and untold casualties makes any sense. It’s a huge gamble in a series of gambles now defining Obama’s place in history. I’d suggest he’s thought through this move, but even he can’t know the outcome.

Last week saw Holocaust survivor Thomas Blatt, 82 give testimony at the trial of John Demjanjuk. Blatt stated that he still has nightmares about his time at the camp at Sobibor, "I go there in my dreams, they are so real. In them I am still there. I can't get it out of my head. This is the price I paid for getting out."

The heartbreaking devastation of Haiti shows again that as deadly as Mother Nature can be when acting alone, she is far more lethal when she conspires with poverty. The immediate cause of the deaths of the hundreds of thousands Haitians was the earthquake, but most of those people might be alive today if Haiti weren’t poor. And why is Haiti poor? Because for centuries foreign and domestic tyrants exploited the Haitian people and blocked their routes out of poverty.

My flamboyant friend came running fast round the bend in tie-dyed t-shirt, yellow shorts and red shoes. He jogged up on my front porch and started pacing as he pulled a little plastic bag from his shorts, drew out a roll-your-own and pack of paper matches, then lit up. If there was a human being more conflicted than I, here he stood.